David Walsh: Time to give Barton a break

He’s far from perfect, but we owe it to Barton to be patient as he tries to beat the demons that blighted the early part of his career

Imagine you’re having dinner with Fabio Capello, a nice Italian restaurant in
west London, and before the antipasto arrives he’s complaining about the
culture of English football. Wants to know why so many players can’t behave
properly and why they are not prepared to commit to the life of the good
professional footballer.

Your gut feeling is that apart from the wages, there isn’t much difference
between the footballers of today and those from the past. Did the players of
the 1960s and 1970s bed women who weren’t their wives, drink when they
shouldn’t, refuse to walk away when the fight began? Of course they did.

It is the scrutiny that has changed and the relentlessness of a media
determined to feed the resentment felt by the public towards footballers and
their huge salaries.

But you don’t say this to Fabio because, part disciplinarian, part pragmatist,
part English-speaker, he likes